And when I decided to make some with my girls this year, I went with crescent rolls for a couple of reasons. For one, I like the taste. They also pair well with cinnamon. And I felt they were a better representation of the cloth that Christ was wrapped in.

The point of the resurrection rolls is to demonstrate to kids how Jesus was buried in the tomb, but when they opened the tomb, it was empty because He had risen. And the marshmallow melts while it bakes, but not until it gives the rolls support so the dough doesn’t flatten. Then the rolls are empty inside.

So, the marshmallow represents Jesus, rolling it in the butter and the cinnamon sugar mixture represents the oils and spices that were used to preserve dead bodies back in His day, and the roll represents the tomb.

Though, I kinda explained it as the rolls representing the cloth that Jesus was wrapped in. Before we baked it. Then the cooked rolls were the tomb which was empty.

It’s not an exact science.

But it is an incredibly delicious way to incorporate Jesus’ story into some Easter baking!

There are only a few ingredients, so it’s an easy baking project to throw together in between other activities.

Rolling the marshmallow in melted butter and spices and wrapping it in dough CAN be a tad messy – but that’s what makes it interesting and fun.

I used a fork to turn it in the butter and scoop it into the cinnamon, but you still gotta get in there with your fingers to wrap it in the dough.

Try pinching shut all the openings as best you can, but don’t worry if you miss a few.

Even if the rolls deflate a little, they’re still all hollow inside once baked.

Oh, and I sprinkled our extra cinnamon sugar over the rolls before baking. It adds a nice touch.

Technically, I should have used two pans.

I didn’t feel like it.

Some of our rolls stuck together, but that really wasn’t a big deal.

A few leaked melted marshmallow all over.

Again: not a big deal.

But you know what WAS a big deal? The awesome taste.

Seriously. These things did not hang around long.

And, of course, to go along with this project, we also read a book about the Easter Story.

Simmer the water in a saucepot. Add the gelatin and stir until fully dissolved.

Remove from heat and stir in the birdseed until all seed is fully coated. If the mixture is still wet after stirring well, add more birdseed.

Place medium to large cookie cutters on top of waxed paper. Scoop birdseed mixture into cookie cutters and fill halfway.

Place a piece of string into the cookie cutter and scoop more birdseed mixture on top of the string, making sure that part of the string is buried into the center of the ornament (I knotted the twine here for support) and part is hanging out. Use a spoon to press the birdseed down firmly.

Allow to sit overnight. Very gently push birdseed ornaments out of cookie cutters and hang where desired. Makes about 6 large shapes.

I’ve been meaning to try a new Soft Sugar Cookie recipe for awhile and I’ve been browsing a bunch of sites and recipes, trying to get plenty of tips.

I settled on a recipe that incorporates sour cream and I rolled the dough thicker than I normally do, and cooked it a little less.

Pretty darn perfect. :)

I typed up the recipe suggesting either vanilla or almond extract. I prefer the almond, but my kids seemed to prefer the batch I made with vanilla. Both were good, though. The only thing to remember is that in the icing, you can use more vanilla than almond extract. Most people seem to prefer it when the almond isn’t overpowering.

I used my royal icing for the cookies because it dries hard and shiny – which makes them easy to stack when storing/displaying/gifting – and because it’s easy to dip them right into the icing to make the whole ordeal quicker.

I liked rolling it out between the waxed paper because it was easy to transfer to the fridge on the back of a cookie sheet, and then I could just pull it out and cut out my cookies.

Re-rolling the dough {and having to add the flour to re-roll it} makes the cookies slightly tougher, or less soft, but I didn’t find the difference noticeable, really.

And I’m not about to throw out excess cookie dough.

Make sure they’re nice and thick and that you don’t over bake them. They should NOT be browning on the edges before you take them out – that will eliminate the softness you’re looking for. In fact, they should look slightly underdone when you take them out.

Oh, and the recipe called for parchment lined pans. I did bake the cookies on parchment paper when I used my regular pans, but what is pictured above are my aluminum Doughmakers Biscuit Sheets, which are textured and so the cookies don’t stick. If you don’t have pans like these, use the parchment paper.

I made the icing while the cookie dough was in the fridge and just set it to the side until later.

For best results: cover with plastic wrap when not in use, and make sure to stir it often when dipping the cookies in it.

You can see that I used plenty of gel coloring to make the icing bright and bold.

You can put the icing into a plastic baggy or decorating bag and draw it onto the cookies instead {kind of like my Chocolate Almond Mummy Cookies} but I had been seeking a different method. I found a few places – and a video – where people were suggesting that you just dip the cookies into the icing.

It worked. Rather well.

I found that it worked best if you stirred the icing often, even between each dip, and if the cookies were thick enough, you didn’t even get any icing on your fingers.

If the icing was too thick, the cookie may stick a little, and you chance it breaking. If your icing feels too thick and is pulling back when you try to lift out the cookie, sprinkle in a few DROPS of water and stir to thin it just a bit. Not too much.

And I’ve tried both a skewer and a fork to scrape off the extra icing. I prefer using the fork because it’s better than the skewer at efficiently stirring the color into the icing and re-stirring it every few minutes while icing the cookies.

When you lift up the cookie and scrape off the extra icing, don’t actually touch the cookie with the fork. While still holding the cookie upside down, or tilted to the side, move the fork through any globs of icing that are above the surface of the cookie. If there’s too much icing on them, it will drip over the sides and leave little puddles around the edges.

Then just let them sit on some wire racks until the icing hardens. It will harden on the outside thinly at first, so don’t pack them away or plate them right away if you have the time to wait. Let them sit for at least an hour, but a few hours is ideal. Just in case. You don’t want crushed/smudged icing after doing all that work.

And I might say, “all that work,” but, really, it’s easy to do. It can take awhile due to all the steps, but it is SO worth it.

Cream together the butter and sugar with a mixer until light and fluffy. Mix in the egg, sour cream, and extract until smooth. In a small bowl, combine the flour, salt, and baking powder, then slowly mix into the wet ingredients until just combined. Do not over mix. Separate the dough in half and roll each piece out between two sheets of waxed paper to a thickness of about 1/2 inch. Refrigerate dough for an hour.

Preheat oven to 350°F (180°C). Remove dough from refrigerator and cut out desired shapes with cookie cutters. Gently gather scraps and reroll on a floured surface. Place cookies an inch apart on parchment lined cookie sheets and bake for 9 to 11 minutes. Do not over bake! Take them out when they appear just about to be done, and before they brown. Let cool completely on a wire rack before icing.

Mix all of the icing ingredients together with a fork. Start with 3 tablespoons of water and add more, about a 1/2 teaspoon at a time, until you reach a consistency where a thick line of icing slowly and smoothly drips off of the fork when lifted from the bowl. Dye it your desired color, dividing it between separate bowls first if using multiple colors.

Dip the tops of the completely cooled cookies into the icing. Gently pull out the cookie and use a fork or skewer to scrape off excess icing without touching the cookie itself. Set cookie on top of a wire rack that’s positioned over waxed paper or foil and allow to harden completely, letting the cookies sit for at least an hour. Store covered.

This is going to be somewhat of an image-heavy post since these cute, little Autumn Leaf Shaped Mini Pizzas are actually easier to explain with photos.

This was a fun dinner we did one night. The girls helped me out. And I’ve done this before, for example with dinosaurs, but I used our leaf cookie cutters this time to give it an autumn spin.

And to make the pizzas from scratch, you follow my Easy Pizza Dough Recipe. Except, once you roll out the dough, you cut out leaf shapes instead of transferring the whole thing to a large pan.

For the cheese topping, I used three kinds: colby jack, cheddar, and mozzarella cheeses. I used the sliced versions they sell at the store that are meant for sandwiches and burgers because they’re easier to cut with cookie cutters. And the extra cheese left over after cutting out my “leaves” went into some macaroni and cheese the next night.

I used 3 flavors of cheese to give it more of a colorful fall-leaf feel, and even if you’re hesitant about doing this, I can assure you – all of the flavors taste amazing on the pizzas.

As you can see in the photos, I used the cookie cutters to cut out both the dough and the cheese. I topped the dough with tomato sauce, spices (especially garlic), Parmesan cheese, and then a leaf shaped slice of cheese.

It is a little difficult to get the dough to keep it’s precise shape and to fit the cheese over the dough with the shapes lining up in with an exact perfection… but that’s okay. Really, one of my favorite parts of these little pizzas is the cheese that drips over the side of the crust onto the pan and mixes with the extra garlic powder and Parmesan and gets all crispy and delicious.

I’ve made quite a few of them with my girls. They only take a minute and they love to play with them.

What’s really awesome, though, is that they also make great gifts! You can have the kids decorate them with doodles and stickers and send them in greeting cards to grandparents, aunts and uncles, and friends. Or the paper hands can BE the greeting card itself.

On that note, they also make great homemade presents for Valentine’s Day or Mother’s / Grandparent’s Day. But we like to make them every so often just for fun.

You make them by folding a piece of paper in half and lining up your child’s hand against the folded half, with their thumb and forefinger touching the crease, as shown above.

Trace their hand, or have them trace their own hand, making sure that the tips of their thumb and forefinger overlap with the creased edge.

Then cut out their hand. Voila!

The space between the thumb and forefinger is what resembles a heart when you open it up, so try to make your outline of the hand resemble half of a heart in that space when you cut it out.

It’s okay if you’re a little off – like I was in this one. Some look more like hearts than others. My girls {and Grandma} love them anyway, even if they’re not perfect.

And one thing that my daughters love is when I take that “heart” that I cut out of the center of their hands and turn it into a little butterfly with just a few more snips of the scissors.

The “butterfly” is that thing in the photo that looks a bit like a number 8 with a pointy bottom. Again: young kids usually aren’t that much of a perfectionist when it comes to crafts.

This is one of my go-to recipes when I want something easy to make that my kids will eat.

I know it may seem strange, but my girls have always eaten this, ever since they started on solid foods, and even though it has spinach in it.

Maybe it’s because I’ve always served spinach, but my kids like it. Of course, they like it best smothered in Alfredo sauce.

So I’m advocating this recipe as not only “easy,” but also “kid-friendly.”

Anyway, the recipe can be altered to your tastes. For example, I tend to change up which Alfredo sauce I buy. Depends on what’s on sale. :)

And I always make this after I’ve made chicken of some kind. The chicken seen here is shredded chicken thighs that were “grilled” on the stove top the night before. You can use white or dark meat, or both. Just make sure it’s seasoned. Plain chicken is sooooo boring. To me, at least. So make your chicken with salt, pepper, garlic powder, paprika, or whatever you normally use.

I like to shred it by pulling it apart with my fingers (which is the fastest method I’ve found) the night that it’s cooked. That way I can just pull the shredded meat out of the fridge when I’m ready to make this.

And when it comes to the spinach, I have no idea how much you would use if you’re using fresh. I’ve always used frozen for this, because I always have frozen spinach on hand.

Here I used the steam-in-the-bag spinach from Target, because that’s what was the cheapest when I went shopping, but I usually stock up on the boxes (that are the same size: 10 oz.) when they’re on sale.

Either way, make sure you drain the spinach really, really well. Spinach holds a lot of water and that water will make your dish far too soggy and keep the sauce from sticking to the pasta.

To drain the spinach, I usually press it into a mesh colander with a fork until no more water drips out.

And I suggest mixing in the spinach before stirring in the chicken or noodles, to make sure there are no dense clumps of spinach hiding in your finished meal.

And that photo is just a close up to show you what I used this time: Roasted Garlic Parmesan Alfredo. But any type of Alfredo will work. Could even make your own Parmesan white sauce instead.

Also, taste it before serving, because, if you’re like me, you may want to mix in a little extra pepper or garlic powder if your chicken wasn’t seasoned enough. I like my spices to be noticeable. :)

It’s something I’ve used forever. My mom often made me Cinnamon Toast (buttered toast sprinkled with cinnamon sugar) when I was a kid, and I still make it today, both for my daughters and for myself.

And I’ve been using it with various recipes quite a bit, so I decided to go ahead and dedicate a blog post to it.

You can buy ready-made cinnamon sugar in the spice aisle at the supermarket, but I just can’t see the sense in that because it’s so overpriced and so easy to make.

In the above photo you see my tools: cinnamon, sugar, and a container to hold it. I also use the knife to mix it, but my mom just shakes the bottle. Either way works.

But, to make things official, here’s a recipe:

Cinnamon Sugar

Ingredients:

1/2 cup sugar
1 Tbs ground cinnamon

Pour ingredients into a jar. Mix with a knife until well combined, or, if your jar has a lid that seals, you can shake to combine.

As I’ve mentioned, I use this on toast. I also add it to French Toast. And apples to make cinnamon apples. And buttered bagels. And snickerdoodle cookies. And baked sweet potatoes.

This list could go on for awhile…

And the stuff stays good pretty much forever.

It’s best to store it in a container that has holes on top, where you can shake it onto the food, but also one that has a cover to keep out dust. Kinda like this. Or a regular sugar dispenser, if that’s all you have, but those pour too quickly for my needs.

Recipes:

Crafts:

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